Perth Voice Interactive

WE got fabulous entries of all shapes and sizes for our Summer Reading competition, so thanks to all the creative souls who got cracking.

We’ll be running them over the next month, then we’ll announce the winners.

First cab off the rank, is Nick Hingston’s reflections on a time he spent working in WA’s beautiful, but challenging, Pilbara. It’s titled With Khuh.

 “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with… I’m not very good at spelling, but I think khuh”. She’s maybe 6, her size thrown into ironic relief against the chair designed for children twice her age. You watch her eyes, looking for clues as to what starts with a khuh. Only contentment shines back at you, the joy of a fleeting moment.

This girl is one of six. You wonder as you move between these six kids, ‘is every child as blithe as these?’, though you enjoy asking the question more than you consider you would searching for an answer. They are all predisposed in their own ways, some with a focus it seems more tenacious than productive, others with the capricious calls of the young mind effortlessly steering. As you watch it makes you feel… what exactly?

Guilt for leaving children exactly like these behind at home? Resentful of the institutions who have forgotten these children? Begrudging of the ease of their youth? ‘Maybe you’re putting too much on these kids’ you think, ‘will they ever ask of themselves these same questions?’.

These four walls, the ones which contain something beginning with khuh, will provide all the formal education these children will have. You’ve walked their length countless times in only two hours, their beguiling quaintness having long since passed. In these four walls, you watch your colleagues provide for these kids in a way few others can. It’s charming really, watching how they blend the rigidities of a far-away curriculum with the intricacies of a gentle life.

You wonder how many of these particulars will remain with these kids, how much will be communicated to those who provide for them. Beyond these kids, these four walls – you stop for a moment to consider if the kids consider them ‘their walls’ – you see the few things there are to see. Each one caressed by spinifex with the carefree permanence only the unowned can have. Two buildings – you’re unsure if they’re occupied – a handful of cars in various states of forget, a fence placed as if by accident and most stark, football goals arching for the sky as if to grace the unknown face of the warm clear blue.

It’s these football goals that leave you to think more about this community, this collection of kids with their hope, invisible optimism and permanently temporary contentment – and that something beginning with khuh. More questions come to mind than you would ever care to ask, ‘who built these?’, ‘do the kids use them?’, ‘do the kids even care about football?’, ‘why are they so short?’, ‘where’s the other set?’, ‘what would be here if we weren’t in Australia?’. It’s that last question you stop to consider.

Where exactly are you? The presence of communities just like this one not far from your distant home in a distant region are evidence enough that this community is as much this country as anything else. But is this country as much this community? Behind you, inside of the four walls, remain those six kids. Six irresolutely unchanged lives made brighter, more self-assured and wonderous by the resolve and undemanding endearment of your colleagues, your friends.

Inside, you ask of the teacher how many people live in town. A shrug would have been a simpler answer than the one received. You know that Aboriginal peoples have long been transient communities, temporary in their stays but not their connection to Country.

The teacher continues in their answer and then with the disparaging tone only a passing motion can bring, says without words that those of the community not currently here have gone to town in search of the common scapegoat.

It confuses you how someone like this teacher, someone who needs to drive hundreds of kilometres for something as luxurious as to browse the shelves of a fluorescent grocer, can surmise that the ills of their student’s families lie at the bottom of a brown paper bag. It is with this motion this conversation ends, not with a defined truth but with the discomfort of assumption and a broad patsy. You ask another question – yet more are imposed upon you by the unbearing landscape. ‘Is the curriculum these kids work on consistent with the city or is it tailored to focus on relevant learning outcomes?’. You’re a little ashamed at the buzzwords – not that the teacher notices. A shorter answer than expected, they detail it’s the same curriculum but perhaps hoping to seem a more bespoke educator to someone sharing their classroom only for the day, they beam when they include that it does feature trips on Country.

With this information sitting on the warm air, made louder, more alien, by its contrast to the ground you stand upon, you’re sure of two things. These four walls contain something beginning with khuh and there exists an unseen disparity of an institution made great by its reach and that of knowledge and custom made great by their persistence in time.

How then you wonder, do we produce and equitably provide the fruits of the sum of these systems and how has our combined and shared consciousness, a consciousness spread across thousands of sprawling lands under the same sun you see outside, not determined the way to do so? Will these institutions together have the capability to determine that elusive something beginning with khuh?

You think more about this, the contrast between a nascent European approach to education and community and the knowledge of 45 thousand years of culture and wisdom as you watch your friends with these children. It is without strain, without preamble or thought that they share with these kids not the joys of their curriculum, but instead the untroubled and effortlessly buoyant knowledge that aspirations are as welcome here as are their families, the presence of their connection to Country remains without question and that there is no doubt to the continuation of the knowledge and custom that is so much theirs that it just is.

Maybe, just like that something beginning with khuh, you think that the others who share this same sun on land beyond reach or perception for these kids, are looking for something subtle without definition, unlabelled except the surrogate names of those burdened by it and yet undoubtedly vacant from their minds, their considerations. You consider that – but no. It’s not that the custodians of the European institution cannot see what they cannot name, it’s that they cannot consider custom and knowledge inconsistent with theirs. Knowledge as old as this land. Knowledge you see waving as the spinifex breathes. Knowledge beyond the football posts. Knowledge you hear singing to you as you murmur across the ground outside. Knowledge shining bright in the eyes of a 6 year old girl unknowingly holding tight to the joys of a fleeting moment.

 “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with… I’m not very good at spelling, but I think khuh”.

You wonder if you will find it.

 She already has.

by NICK HINGSTON